Arlind Qori - The EU Integration Process as an Ideological and Practical Straitjacket

7/28/2019 Arlind Qori - The EU Integration Process as an Ideological and Practical Straitjacket

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The EU integration process as an

ideological and practical straitjacket

(the case of Albania)

By Arlind Qori, May 2013

According to the latest opinion polls1, 86.5% of the Albanians would vote

in favor of the EU integration, the largest percentage in the EU integration

aspiring countries. Friedrich Engels once put it that the poor, being

dispossessed on earth from any kind of property, built in their imagination

a realm of prosperity and equality in heaven. The major socio-economical

decisions of the Albanian governments in the last 20 years were ‚advised‛from institutions like the IMF, and the EU. Despite the impoverishing socio-

economical consequences2 of the neoliberal agendas of these institutions,

the overwhelming majority of the Albanian people support the EU agenda.

The concept of ideology as a straitjacket shaping the political

consciousness of the society would explain the superficial paradox of theabove-mentioned conclusion.

Ideology is defined in a number of alternative ways, such as those which

give it the unreflective status of integrating individuals to the value-system

that enables a society to function, those Enlightenment-based which

1 Albanian Institute for International Studies (October 2012), quoted by

http://www.balkanweb.com/shqiperi/2685/shqiperi-rritet-mbeshtetja-per-anetaresimin-ne-

be-105588.html2 According to official figures from the Bank of Albania, the unemployment rate is going to

reach 24.8% in the end of 2012. http://shekulli.com.al/web/p.php?id=5659&kat=87. Non-

official sources rate it around 40-50% http://www.shqiperia.com/lajme/lajm/nr/4666/50-

perqind-e-popullates-pergjithesisht-e-papune. On the other hand, other socio-economical

factors are going from bad to worse. There is no income-based minimum living standard;

wage-laborer’s conditions, especially in the mines and the in the textile-clothing industries,

are degrading, their working conditions are deteriorating, wages are going down etc; the

health care institutions do not provide health treatment for those without health

insurances, and the hospital’s conditions are also going from bad to worse (of courseexcept private hospitals which are too expensive for the majority of the population). This is

reflected ideologically in the desolating approach towards for example the Greek crisis.

Apart from usual xenophobic remarks, most of the people still don’t understand why theGreeks are making such a fuss for something common Albanians experience year after

year.

http://shekulli.com.al/web/p.php?id=5659&kat=87



http://www.shqiperia.com/lajme/lajm/nr/4666/50-perqind-e-popullates-pergjithesisht-e-papune








classify it as just a false consciousness based on prejudice which can also

serve priestly interests, those which focus on the legitimation of hierarchic

power relations in society, especially the socio-economical ones etc. Thecurrent perspective of ideology will be based on the latter’s conception,twisting it so that we can understand ideology critically, not just as a

common lie, but as a ‚lie‛ which has performative effects, permeates notonly the way people think, but also the way they consciously and

unconsciously act. To begin with some kind of definition, ideology is used

when… ‛when a dominant power may legitimate itself by promoting beliefs and values congenial to it; naturalizing and universalizing such

beliefs as to render them self-evident and apparently inevitable; denigrating

ideas which might challenge it; excluding rival forms of thought, perhaps

by some unspoken but systematic logic; and obscuring social reality inways convenient to itself. Such ‘mystification’… frequently takes the formof masking or suppressing social conflicts, from which arises the

conception of ideology as an imaginary resolution of real contradictions.‛3

This proto-definition has its origins in Marx and Engels’ conception ofideology as a camera obscura which ‚truthfully‛ represents the upside-

down character of the socio-economical relations. Leaving aside the twistsof Lukácsian false consciousness, and focusing on the performative and

legitimating functions of ideology, we may use the Althusserian definition

of ideology as that which …‛represents the imaginary relationship ofindividuals to their real conditions of existence.‛4 This is what enablesŽižek5 to use ideology as a fantasy which struggles not only to hegemonize

the field of discursivity, as in the neo-Gramscian approach of Laclau and

Mouffe, but to create retroactively the missing unity of the traumatic Real,

which in Žižekian Lacanese is the name of the Marxist class struggle.Anyway, dealing critically with the Albanian ideology, which tries to suture

the onto-political gap in the nodal point of the idea of Europe and its

concrete materialization, the EU, the commonest aspects of ideological

legitimation will come forward.

Before analyzing the legitimating political discourse, one has to review

shortly the major economical reforms that the EU imposes on various

Albanian governments as criteria for joining it. Following the Copenhagen

3 Eagleton, Terry. (1991). Ideology: an introduction , p. 5-6, London: Verso4 Althusser, Louis. (1971). Lenin and Philosophy and other Essays . English Transl. Ben

Brewster, p. 162, New York: Monthly Review Press5 ‚The fundamental level of ideology, however, is not that of an il lusion masking the real

state of things but that of an (unconscious) fantasy structuring our social reality itself.‛Žižek, Slavoj. (2009). The Sublime Object of Ideology , p. 30, London: Verso



criteria, the concrete EU-Albania agreements, Albania had to materialize

neoliberal economical reforms such as the privatization of major public

enterprises, fiscal austerity, a pro-business approach, which means that the

sole economic model of development comes through encouraging only

private enterprises, the flexibility of the labor market, meaning exclusively

the creation of the contemporary precariat , the orientation of the

educational reforms towards market-integration, so leaving aside the

critical-reflective dimension of especially the higher education etc. And all

these agreements between political partners that share the sameideological views are conditions not only to be part of the EU, but also to

receive economic assistance from the EU.6 These socio-economical

reforms are not the product of unexpected agreements between unknown

partners, but the consequence of a radicalizing neoliberal agenda that all

Albanian post-communist governments had. It started before the EU

integration process, in the vest of privatizing almost all public productive

enterprises through the ideological legitimation of shock therapy, overtly

used in public discourse, until recently with the quasi-total privatization of

most of the public economical resources going from a large percentage of

6 According to the Commission of the European Communities’ Proposal for a Council

Decision on the principles, priorities and conditions contained in the European Partnership

with Albania and repealing Decision 2006/54/EC, Brussels, 06.11.2007. COM(2007) 656,

still in vigor, the Albanian government, among other things, is urged to: 1. Complete the

unbundling of the state electricity company KESH, and privatize its distribution arm.

Stabilize KESH's financial position by raising collection rates and bringing prices to cost-

recovery levels and increase electricity generation and interconnection capacity. 2.

Continue implementing a stability-oriented fiscal policy which aims at fiscal consolidation

and is conducive to low inflation and external sustainability. 3. Pursue a monetary policy

conducive to the objective of achieving and maintaining price stability to reduce and

anchor inflation expectations. 4. Intensify enforcement against piracy and counterfeiting.

5. Further implement the action plans to remove administrative barriers to business andinvestment and to address the informal economy and ensure proper, non-discretionary,

non-discriminatory implementation of business-related legislation, rules and procedures.

Reduce obsolete and inefficient regulations through regulatory guillotine procedures. 6.

Reduce the tax wedge on wages and improve incentive structures and flexibility in the

labor market to increase the participation and employment rates, while securing tax

resources by broadening the tax base and improving compliance, at a measured and

prudent pace to ensure sustainable public finances. 7. Improve the education system with

the aim of increasing the supply of sought-after skills, fostering employment and long-

term economic growth. 8. Speed up the privatization of publicly owned enterprises to

strengthen corporate governance and reduce quasi-fiscal losses. 9. Develop procedures

and administrative capacity to ensure effective protection of the EU's financial interests.

10. Assistance to the Western Balkan countries is conditional on progress on satisfyingthe Copenhagen criteria and on meeting the specific priorities of this European

Partnership.



military barracks (which includes the selling of large amounts of

ammunitions), the partial privatization of hydro-electrical dams, through the

privatization of public service providers like the Albanian Telecom, the

electro-energetic supply provider KESH, to end with the last projected blow

to the commons, the near-future implementation of a higher-educational

voucher-based financial reform, based on the Pinochetian model, which

looks forward to finance for-profit private universities with public money.

And considering especially the current right-wing government of Sali

Berisha, all these are boasted publicly as miraculous socio-economicalreforms that among others will shorten the way towards the EU

integration. In this way, Albania is depicted as a neoliberal vanguard,

whose ideological construct is in tune with the current austerity programs

the EU is trying to impose on its member and aspiring countries. And the

discrepancy between the EU policies enthusiasm and being not only one of

the poorest countries in Europe, but also with emerging formal (bourgeois)

democratic problems leaning towards new forms of personal

authoritarianism, is bridged by ideology.

To come back to the concept of a critique of ideology, the Albanian case

can be used as a quasi-total hegemonizing ideology not only because ofthe official political stances, but also and especially because of the

unofficial political discourses which find a common ground not only in the

EU integration process, but in its understanding as a hawkish capitalist

approach towards the economy, and society at large. For example, there is

no political debate between the parliamentary parties7 concerning the EU

7 The current governmental coalition is named ‚The Government of European Integration‛,and one of its main partners names itself ‚The Socialist Movement for integration‛, a nd

looking to its governmental program one finds both the fantastic goal of EU membership

and the neoliberal socio-economical reforms that would enable it:

http://www.km.gov.al/?fq=preprog/programi. Or to take a more current example. The

Albanian Prime Minister, Sali Berisha, talked enthusiastically (ideologically) about the

Nobel prize according to the EU: ‚The EU foundation and its consolidation in these sixdecades has proved to be the determining factor of cooperation, common understanding,

prosperity and peace in Europe‛ – Own translation from:

http://www.panorama.com.al/2012/10/13/bashkimi-evropian-fiton-cmimin-nobel-te-paqes.

On the other hand, if one looks at the main opposition’s party, The Soc ialist Party, it

shares unequivocally the goal of the EU integration and most of its socio-economical

priorities, despite some minor changes towards a more ‚humane‛ or social capitalism. Itspolitical program shows a cultural-civilizational twist that relegitimates not only the EU

integration, but also the NATO integration: ‚Conscious of belonging to Europe in our

http://www.km.gov.al/?fq=preprog/programi





integration, which means that the apolitical debate is straitjacketed in

technical terms about who can move faster towards the common goal. On

the other hand, the quasi-totality of public opinion makers, intellectuals etc

share the same hegemonic view, so that alternative points of view are

marginalized at best, or ridiculed at worse.

But how can an ideological discourse hegemonize the field of discursivity,

and also legitimize the actual socio-economical system? From Marx toŽižek ideology aims at forming a consensual public political consciousness,so that by silencing political alternatives, it can hegemonize comfortably

the field of discursivity and urge people to act in accordance with it. Its

basic features are the naturalization of the historical, the transformation of

contingency in historical necessity and vice versa, the transformation of the

relational to the identical, the silencing of socio-political antagonisms and

contradictions, the raising of the partial to the status of impartial

universality etc.

Before analyzing concretely these features in the Albanian ideology, an

important digression is needed. The EU is part of a larger Idea of Europe

which functions as a cultural-civilizational nodal point of ideology.Sometimes, in the Albanian political discourse, Europe itself is part of a

larger unit, the West, which in a metaphysical dichotomist conception of

identity founds itself on the unbridgeable cleavage between itself and its

Other, namely the Eastern barbarism, Ottomanism, Islamism, Communism8

etc. In this way, the Albanian identity is constructed as an eternal

belonging to the Western (European) moral superior civilization, and its

actual or historical distance from Europe could be explained only

conspiratively as a devilish work of the Islamic-Communist plot9. As the

hearts and in our culture, we appreciate the Albanian integration in NATO…‛ – Own

translation, taken from: http://ps.al/psprogrami.pdf8 Of course political marginalization, or still worse implicit coercion, is the by-product of

the-only-way ideology confronting its devilish opponents. The Albanian Prime Minister Sali

Berisha, dubbing incorrectly and demagogically the opposing Socialist Party (some kind of

late Third Way social-democracy) as being Marxists, said: ‚Marx can never walk again inthe roads and cities of Albania.‛ – Own translation taken from

http://www.km.gov.al/?fq=brenda&m=news&lid=154749 In the context of the Albanian Government celebration of the centenary of the Albanian

Declaration of Independence, it is useful to refer to the Žižekian critique of ideology again:‚Therein consists one of the fundamental mechanisms of ideological legitimization: tolegitimize the existing order by presenting it as a realization of a dream-- not of our dream,

but of the Other's, the dead ancestor's dream , the dream of previous generations.‛ Žižek.Slavoj. (1993). Tarrying with the Negative: Kant, Hegel, and the Critique of Ideology , p.



most important Albanian writer and public intellectual Ismail Kadare puts it

in a book which aims at demonstrating the hardcore European identity ofthe Albanians: ‚In December 1990 (the days of the first anti-communist

protests – author’s note )…the slogan ‘We want Albania to be like Europe’was the first to echo like a hymn and a new program…Some days later,the statue of the most anti-European man this country has known (Enver

Hoxha, the Communist leader of Albania until 1985 – author’s note ) was

taken down and dragged through the streets.‛10 In this way, belonging to a

superior cultural (even racial in some implicit sense) leads naturally toconsidering the EU as the only political road map, meaning also that its

neoliberal reforms are not contingent or indeterminate alternatives, but a

necessity to be followed at any cost.

Consequently, like the apologists of capitalism, the EU is conceived not as

an eternal state, but in a historicist manner, like the end-of-history

accomplishment of a natural drive towards freedom (viewed in competitive

form), formal equalities, prosperity etc. Ideology either shows itself to be

an eternal natural state of the situation (like the state of nature-social

contract of the contractualists), or historicizes itself mildly to end up in the

unavoidable bright and only future of the fulfillment of history (capitalism,European Union etc). So what is contingent is conceptualized in terms of

necessity. Vice versa, in Žižekian terms, ideology turns what is necessary insome kind of historical contingency. If we refer to class struggle as the

Real of the society (as the unfillable hole in reality which disturbs any

harmonization such as the silencing of political struggle), ideology tries to

fill this hole not only by striving towards an hierarchical (capitalist)

harmonic stratification of the society, but also by defining class struggle, or

the radical emancipatory fight for equality, as a contingent and completely

overcome aspect of the not-so-recent history. In the Albanian political

discourse this is presented as the contingent accident of history(Communism), guilty of dividing society by putting the poor against the

rich, but which nonetheless is ultimately corrected in the last two decades’common struggle towards the European Union, capitalism and a well-

stratified hierarchical society, where everybody stays where s/he belongs.

117, Durham: Duke University Press. Accordingly, the Albanian ideology justifies its socio-

economical policies in terms of the dreams of the Other, in this case in the Europeanist

dreams of the Founding Fathers, political and intellectual elite of Rilindja Kombëtare

(Albanian National Revival), whose wisdom and hopes still haunt ideologically the

common Albanians.10 Kadare, Ismail. (2006). Identiteti evropian i shqiptarëve , p. 8, Tiranë: Onufri (Own

translation).



Anyway, as it is the case with ideologies, they interrelate the utopian with

the commonsensical pragmatism. If the heyday of its convincing power the

EU (and its neoliberal agenda) were represented as the utopia at-hand, in

times of crisis like the current one, it takes the shape of the only option left

on the table, outside of which starts the hellish barbaric Stalinism of the

Left. In the first years of the nineties the West, Europe, capitalism, the EU

etc, took the form of a utopian popular strive towards heaven on earth 11

not only in terms of economic well-being, but also in the vest of authentic

personal freedom, genuine equality (paradoxically one of the mainaccusations against the ruling Communists dealt with their being

transformed in a privileged cast, so unconsciously for not being

communists enough). Anyway as authors from Ernst Bloch to Karl

Mannheim have put it, utopia can have a destabilizing effect on the ruling

ideology. Of course it served to throw away what was left from the real

existing Socialism, but in the day after it could still enrage people,

especially their authentic hopes for freedom, equality, prosperity etc. Faced

with the structural impossibility to spread well-being to everybody,

capitalism can still acquire if not active consensus, at least a fatalist

desolation which legitimizes the socio-economical system not for being thebest, but for its being the least worst. It means that any alternative to

capitalism, or institutionally to the EU, means total collapse of the

economy, overt terror of revolutionary parties and a new form of old-styleStalinist totalitarianism. It doesn’t mean that the situation is not going to beworse (like good capitalist apologists say: it’s going to become worse

before it gets better [!!!]), but that these are economical sacrifices

necessary for a future imaginary recovery12. At worse, even if there is no

way out, at least this is the best way to survive within.

As we put it in the beginning, ideology doesn’t name a common lie or a

false consciousness ready to be unmasked by some enlightened elite. Itbuilds the way we relate to the conditions of our society, even if this

11 I can remember from my childhood in the early nineties how rumors of eternal

prosperity were spread. One of them was that if the Democratic Party (right wing anti-

communist) were to win, a quasi-infinite number of European ships, waiting in a long-long

line from the harbors of Italy to the Albanian isle of Sazan, full of consuming goods would

be ready to land and spread the wealth to everybody.12 For example, the current economical disaster in Greece is conceived in the Albanian

political discourse as a warning at what happens if one doesn’t abide to the EU neoliberalpolicies. And in accordance with the EU hegemonic discourse, the salvation of Greece,

and the future of any country including Albania, rests on the tough application of austerity

programs.



relation (identification) is built imaginarily or through a fantasy construction

which helps our coordination in the ‚reality‛, by obfuscating the Real ofclass struggle13. Ideology doesn’t concern solely with what people think orfeel, but also with how they act, even unconsciously. So, if in the heydays

of capitalism and the EU integration it meant a kind of intersection

between the public discourse and its private reflection on individual

consciousness and concrete political actions (voting, participation in mass

rallies in favor of what ideology legitimates), in times of crisis like this one it

nonetheless structures society, but in another way. In these times of crises,despite the hegemonic political discourse, there will always be adiscrepancy between the public and private opinion. Ideology doesn’t workby Orwelly lavishing people’s minds, but by constructing a schizophrenicpolitical consciousness in almost everybody. Although more than 85% of

the Albanians are in favor of the EU integration, and most of them probably

even of its policies, when asked individually or in private conversations

they tend to show a radical skepticism towards ideology. Authors from

Mikhail Bakhtin14 to Peter Sloterdijk15 have used the popular ill-articulated

discourses as a resistance towards political hegemonic discourses.

Nevertheless, despite the theoretical stances of authors as Mikhail Bakhtinor Peter Sloterdijk who emphasize the folkish distrust or its covert criticism

towards ideology in the vest of kynicism , ideology finds its actualization inthe chasm of man’s consciousness: although privately they don’t believe in

13 ‚Ideology is not a dreamlike illusion that we build to escape insupportable reality; in itsbasic dimension it is a fantasy-construction which serves as a support for our 'reality' itself

an 'illusion' which structures our effective, real social relations and thereby masks some

insupportable, real, impossible kernel (conceptualized by Ernesto Laclau and Chantal

Mouffe as 'antagonism': a traumatic social division which cannot be symbolized). The

function of ideology is not to offer us a point of escape from our reality but to offer us thesocial reality itself as an escape from some traumatic, real kernel.‛ - Žižek, Slavoj. (2009).The Sublime Object of Ideology , p. 45, London: Verso14 Bakhtin analyses carnival as a practical and discursive resistance towards official truths

or imposing ideologies. ‚…carnival celebrated temporary liberation from the prevailingtruth and from the established order; it marked the suspension of all hierarchical rank,

privileges, norms, change, and renewal‛ – Morris, Pam. Ed. (1994). The Bakhtin Reader.

Selected Writings of Bakhtin, Medvedev and Voloshinov , p. 199. London: Arnold

Publishers. 15 Sloterdijk uses the Diogenian kynicism as an irony aimed at delegitimizing the powers’truths: ‚Those who take the liberty of confronting prevailing lies provoke a climate of

satirical loosening up in which the powerful, together with their ideologists of domination,

let go affectively —precisely under the onslaught of the critical affront by kynics.‛ – Sloterdijk, Peter. (2001). Critique of cynical reason , p. 103. Minneapolis: University of

Minnesota Press



it anymore, entering the public sphere or the realm of collective thinking

and action, they ‚magically‛ act as though they believe in it, or at least thisis what they think the Big Other believes for them (Žižek). Ideologyfunctions not as an authentic belief of everybody in the sleeping room, but

as a practical identification with the hegemonic view in the public

discourse. So if they are asked individually, most probably most of them

will even ridicule the ideological content, but if somebody expresses this

position publicly, or tries to build some form of collective resistance, they

‚feel‛ that the Big Other (the master signifier which in fantasy constructsour cognitive map and leads our everyday actions) is shaken, so that their‚normal‛ social functioning, which is founded on the belief that the BigOther believes in something (the EU etc), is put in danger. I can laugh atideology as long as the laughter doesn’t wake the others whom I believethat still believe, so that I have to conform myself and survive socially. If

my laughter awakes them (the Big Other as the catch of ideology), despite

what I privately think, I have to show my solidarity to them, so that no

matter what (no matter if my life is a misery), I can be part of the survival

club, whose outcasts should perish. In this way ideology not only is not

threatened by everybody’s private disbelief, but it builds its consistency onit as long as it gives each individual the perception that privately s/he is

resisting, but in vain, because of the impossibility to radically transform the

current and eternal state of affairs. This is ideology, which Marx condenses

in Das Kapital : ‚Sie wissen es nicht, aber sie tun es.‛16

Arlind Qori is an activist of the Albanian radical-left organization Organizata Politike. He

also co-edits the organization's blog www.opolitike.org. On a professional level, he

lectures on issues of Political Philosophy, and Post-modern Political Discourse in the

University of Tirana.

16 The later Marx of Capital used the category of commodity fetishism to express more

fully what in The German Ideology, he and Engels called ideology. ‚…by equating their

different products to each other in exchange as values, they equate their different kinds of

labour as human labour. They do this without being aware of it.‛ – Marx, Karl. (1982).Capital. A Critique of Political Economy . Volume One . Transl. Ben Fowkes, p. 166-167,

London: Penguin Books & in association with New Left Review.

http://www.opolitike.org/




Arlind Qori - The EU Integration Process as an Ideological and Practical Straitjacket

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